Querencia

After a long day at work, people are often excited to retreat to the place where they can relax and function on autopilot: home. Unfortunately, for people with physical disabilities, living in homes that are not designed for their specific needs often causes extra stress and hard work. This thesis explores the design of homes for people with visual impairments, wheelchair users, and hearing impairments. By designing a housing prototype for each of these three disabilities, this thesis demonstrates that the experience of home living can be improved through prioritizing user-specific agendas of comfort, safety, and belonging. These three design prototypes can be modified without losing the accommodating goals to fit various site conditions and housing densities, making them applicable for diverse lifestyles and locations. These design solutions demonstrate how a refocusing of design priorities can improve the experiential quality of home for people with visual impairments, wheelchair users, and hearing impairments.